I grew up rural, and moved into a small town.

I went back out to the mountains to visit family after bring away for a few years and I was blown away. For as small as my town is, it still can’t compare to a middle of nowhere sky.

Don’t be silly, plenty of city folk have seen a picture of the full starry night sky.

I remember seeing the actual milky way when I looked up back in the 80’s and 90’s. Now we’re lucky to see the brightest stars and planets at all. My son has never seen it. This is rural W-EUR btw.

This made me very sad. I’m very privileged, I live in a dark sky community very near a big telescope and on the border of a huge desert. My dad’s really into astronomy, looking at the night sky has been a big part of my life. I lived for a bit in the city, and the sky was one of the things I missed the most.

It’s like the ocean, I suppose. Another thing that it seems impossible to me that people could go their whole lives and never see, but maybe most do.

Was lucky enough as a kid to get to visit one of those giant, astronomical telescopes one evening. The astronomer got it pointed at what he called a “star cluster” and invited me to take a look. I expected, like, a handful of stars. Ten? Twenty? I saw more stars in that cluster than I’ve ever seen in my life, and it blew my little mind. It was stunning.

People living in cities sometimes leave and many have not lived in a city their whole lives. Additionally, the power can go out at night in cities. For instance, where I live we sometimes get tropical storms, winter storms, and other disasters that can knock out power for hours (and even days) even inside the city – I imagine that’s not uncommon elsewhere. A lot of cities in poorer nations ration power or only have electricity available during certain hours.

So, overall, I would say that it’s probably not the case that “most” people have never seen a full starry night unless you’re getting super technical and pedantic about the word “full” to where you’re specifically asking about a completely unobstructed view with 0% light pollution, in which case then I would say that almost nobody has seen a full starry night in that case, regardless of whether or not they live in a city.

It was enough for me to move to a dark sky site. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy cities and city people. But this was affordable and breathtaking, and I’m a natural hermit anyway.

I’ve been on a few cruises in my life, and my favorite part is always going out to the darkest party of the deck in the middle of the night when the ships out in open waters, to just lie there and look at the stars.

The starry sky is part of why I’m excited for my frat’s annual canoe trip in the backwaters of Minnesota, just outside Nimrod (population 69). The dark skies map linked in other comments shows it as a dark blue, and when there are no clouds it is truly a magical sight.

Seeing so many stars at once makes me understand why astronomy and constellations were so interesting to ancient peoples. It also makes me a little sad to know that such wonder is hidden behind the glow of the cities I’ve lived in.

I was blown away by the night sky on my first night in Alaska.

i saw it wile i was underway, on watch where the edges of the earth falls away leaving me sailing through the stars

I vaguely remember when I was like 6 or 7, I was at my maternal grandparent’s ancestral house and it was summer and I was just lying outside on the ground staring at the night sky, and I think the adults were just talking about stuff I don’t remember. I mean its been almost 2 decades, the memory is very fuzzy. I remember ther was lizards on the house, and there was like a very swampy farmland area thing (idk how to describe it lol). It wasn’t like the done with machinary, at least not at the time, it was done manually. (Luckily I never had to do that, my Hukou was rural so it would’ve been quite shitty), I heard from my mother there was some blood-sucking worm hiding on the farm. This was in Mainland China around 2000-2010s, so there wasn’t much electricity in the village, and very few light-pollution. I don’t remember there being internet, my concept of the world was so small, now I’m all the way in the United States. I heard that most people die very close to where they were born, and don’t even have a passport. And I’ve have passports from 2 different countries! (well not simultaneously, but you get the idea)

I don’t think I ever recognized any contallations, I was way too young at the time. Or maybe I did and forgot… 🤷‍♂️

Now I kinda wanna just go someplace rural to see the night sky, bit unfortunately, not being white and going to a rural area in America feels… um… 👀 verrry sketchy, to say the least (cuz racism lol).

I work in a very rural area, sometimes you have to slow clients down and tell them to appreciate the natural beauty around them(clouds, mountains, trees, rainbows/sundogs, etc.). I’m going to blame this on phones more than urbanization though

I haven’t seen real stars since I went to the boundary waters in 2012. It’s a surreal experience, and one of the things that led to my radicalization.

It’s not just cities - there’s nearly no dark sky sites in all of Europe, and very few dark sky areas east of the Mississippi in the US.

I didn’t see the Milky Way with my naked eye until driving through NE New Mexico in my late 20s.

darkskymap.com/nightSkyBrightness